


Settle on the Dust

by bansheesquad (deathwailart)



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 11:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19745182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/bansheesquad
Summary: "Oh Maple," she whispered because there were so many things it was easiest to say with her face pressed to her horse's neck, "what am I doing? Besides acting a fool."Or: cigarettes at night under the stars after a long day of riding when you're making eyes at the other woman out on the trail with you





	Settle on the Dust

Every inch of the ride that day had been hell on the horses long before they'd stopped to make camp, the last stretch of the journey involving a treacherous stretch of picking their way down the mountainside in the gathering dark as the animals protested no matter the encouragement given: clicking tongue, nudge in the ribs, a hearty clap on good strong necks with all the encouraging words they dared in the open air where voices carried. Even peppermints and sugar lumps had done little, increasingly distressed whickering all they received in return for their efforts as the ground slipped away. At least it hadn't rained prior to them attempting this. The terrain would've been nothing short of deadly had it done so, the sort of slip-slide to take horse and rider down in one fell swoop, a broken leg the least of the troubles they might've received, a death sentence more likely. Maple had balked at the pines swaying when the wind picked up, all of Edith's wit bent to keep her seat and even Whisky, long since used to the wilderness had almost thrown Winona when an owl had swept past them soundlessly in search of prey.  
  
There were wolves about somewhere too; mournful songs carried high the night wind that kept the horses restless down in the valley once they'd finally made camp, brushed them both down, got some sort of food in all four of them. Not that it had been much of a meal for Edith or Winona. Even with the trees they hadn't wanted to risk the fire and cold beans and salted venison weren't doing much for either of them after calming twitchy beasts. The sort of day, all in all, where Edith thought with the edge of longing of what she'd left behind her some months ago now. Or at the very least her bed. A hot bath when she wanted it. One she never had to pay for.  
  
But that was then, this was now, and she didn't regret her choice for a moment. Still, the heart was a foolish thing and well Edith knew it as she had some years now but the reminder of it rode alongside her and shared her tent, her meals, all her travels with her. Not that she'd have it any other way of course but still—  
  
The flap of the tent opened, interrupting her thoughts, Edith looking up from the claws and teeth she'd been counting out. She'd been in the midst of splitting them between their packs for safekeeping; should they lose anything, well, they'd still have some money at the end of it. There were lawless types on the roads who saw two ladies (if they were called ladies, they'd been called far worse when folk thought they were out of earshot) riding with no one else for company.  
  
"Damn horses," Winona muttered as she pulled off her hat and neckerchief, striding inside. "Nothing'll settle 'em tonight."  
  
Winona was in many ways all that Edith wasn't: taller by a head, broad across the shoulders, accustomed to wearing man's clothes – she said she'd been wearing them since she was a child – with skin freckled and tanned from a life outdoors under the sun, hardly prone to the burns Edith picked up though that might've been all the Irish in Edith that her family didn't like to talk about though her red hair did the talking for enough of them all these years later. Edith wore her hair long and in braids down her back or about the crown of her head, Winona meanwhile preferred her hair to be kept shorter. More sensible that way for all the snarls and tangles it picked up, and of course the washing or the likelihood of being grabbed but Edith couldn't part with it. Besides, Winona never seemed to mind helping her unknot it and had held the length of it up by the firelight once and declared it fine indeed. Thank God Edith's back had been to her so she hadn't seen her blushing.  
  
All in all, Winona was the impressive one to cast a long shadow and Edith found herself content to sit in her shade as long as she was allowed to look up when she could.  
  
"Reckon they smell something we don't?" Edith asked, distracted as she so often was by Winona moving about in the small shared space. It was getting to be ridiculous by now, wasn't it? That it took so little to have her flustered worse than the girls in the romance novels she'd left behind in her bedroom before she'd set off with nothing but what she'd stolen from her brothers and father to wear along with her faithful horse. Hell or high water she wouldn't have left Maple back on the ranch even if there had been sturdier, more suitable horses she might have taken for the new life.  
  
Maple hadn't been meant for this hard living but she'd taken to it with good grace and gusto, much like Edith herself or so she liked to think. None of it terrible for a girl such as her, born to a gentle life. If only her parents could see her now, a line of thinking she pushed down and away as Winona took a seat alongside her, her hip popping as she stretched out those long legs that had to be as weary as Edith's own from a long day in a saddle. Not that she should ever wonder such things about her companion but she did, because that was who she was and she'd made as much peace with it as she was likely to in the privacy of her own thoughts at the very least, if Winona's thighs got chafed the way hers did, longing for cool rivers to stop by whenever the chance presented itself. The guilt woke her in the mornings, chased away by her bitter morning coffee and whatever there was for breakfast, a thing not to be discussed.  
  
After all, it wasn't—  
  
Well she'd never seen Winona with anyone but they hardly stopped long enough in civilised places these days to have the opportunity.  
  
"Edith?" Winona knocked a knee against Edith's, a smile on her tanned face, the freckles standing out across the bridge of her nose. What a summer it had been for them so far, the kind Edith never would have had if she'd remained back home on the ranch until Winona had come along.   
  
"Sorry, got lost in my head a moment – what did you say?"  
  
"Only saying that they'll smell wolves, if not then it's hearing them and well, Maple? She's still a gentle girl ain't she? I love her same as you, we'll toughen her up yet but she spooks and sometimes Whisky's not got the sense God gave a goat, 'specially when it comes to a filly."  
  
Laughing hard enough that her hair fell into her face, Edith tipped her head to rest of Winona's shoulder. Cigarette smoke and sweat caught in her shirt as always, comforting this close. "You need to break it to him that he's been gelded."  
  
"Aww I can't do that to my poor boy, it'd break his heart." Winona flopped back to the bedroll, folding her arms above her head, baring a stretch of pale skin that Edith glanced at then looked away from.   
  
"Think it's worth going after the wolves?" Steering the conversation back on track gently as she could, Edith returned to packing up the last of what she'd been sorting, half of her tempted to dig out the journal she kept with all the notes on their finances amongst other things but that'd mean moving. Leaning clean over Winona to get to it. Over that bare skin, denim-clad thighs. All the warmth of her.   
  
Best not.   
  
"Miss Edith," Winona said around a laugh and Edith's foolish heart dared to skip a beat the way it never had before no matter the farmhands or rancher's sons or family friends who tipped their hats to her. "You fixing to have us eaten?"  
  
"No, of course not, but I'm a good shot, you too; wouldn't it be something if we could have a few wolf pelts to sell?" Did she sound wheedling? The starry-eyed girl she feared she was when she looked at Winona as often as she did, unable to help herself when comparing the two of them; no matter how gently some ideas were shot down, she was always _small_ in those moments, always reminded of her parents, her brothers, their estimations of her back on the ranch, back in town small as it had been.  
  
Winona was considering it though; her face screwed up when she thought because clearly she hadn't had folks who'd told her not to do that. Wrinkles her mother had so often scolded. "It would, it would. Depends if we can get a good sight on them without getting surrounded, how many, if the horses—"  
  
"Don't spook," Edith finished, giving her a shove, putting the effort in to have Winona budge even an inch. All the years pitching in where she could had given Winona muscle Edith lacked, the kind she only became aware of when they protested at the end of a long hard day. "Even without, it's still a tidy sum here. For two ladies of course, unless anyone pities us and throws in a little extra like last time."  
  
"Don't go knocking it." Winona took her hand, a callused thumb brushing over her knuckles so either Edith had pulled a face or something in her voice had betrayed her. "They did that with me, still do, and more fool them. They don't know you or us, what's it matter?"  
  
"It just—I know." Edith tugged her hand back, stung, jaw working. "You're right, it's foolish, _I'm_ foolish."  
  
"You're not, if it matters to you—"  
  
"I'm going to check on Maple."  
  
It was compounding the foolishness – the blustering of a girl not getting her way or who was seeking the high road after being told she couldn't do something – to leave the tent, stopping just short of storming out with what dignity she had but it rankled something fierce and she couldn't explain it. Or she could but somehow the words always got snarled up somewhere between head and heart and mouth when she had to say them in front of Winona who inducted her into this grand sort of life in the first place. Of course the instant she walked out she regretted it because that was the way of such things, the night air a slap to flushed cheeks because anger could keep you warm only so long and it had kept her warmer in a small space much the same as her mother's temper had always been worse for them all over the long winters. Edith had always privately thought that her mother hadn't much wanted anything to do with marriage or children, same with her father, but that was what was expected and that was what they had done, and perhaps when they'd all been too small to form many opinions it hadn't been too terrible. But oh a house of young folk with tempers and minds of their own that dared?   
  
Maple whinnied, nosing at Edith when she approached, a palomino bright as a gold coin, hobbled to keep her from running away. A velvet brush against her hand as Edith ran her hand down a fine neck, hot and warm that she buried her face against.  
  
"Sorry girl, I've nothing for you now, it's all inside," she murmured, not wanting to make too much noise. Not that it stopped Maple from nuzzling in or Whisky's approach, a liver chestnut, not prone to shyness who snorted right in Edith's ear. It used to make her jump back before she'd gotten used to his lack of manners. "If I have nothing for Maple, I've got nothing for you glutton."  
  
Whisky didn't seem to mind her lack of food, accepting the hand she stretched upwards so she could scratch between his ears, leaning some of her weight on him as the horses closed in around her. If there was anything much she missed about the ranch – and there were things, from time to time – then it was often the animals that'd never done her many wrongs. They'd existed. Seldom complained about their lot in life. Made terrible messes but she'd had brothers who'd made worse out of nothing more than sheer spite it often seemed and because there was someone else who'd clear them up for them so that was that. No, the animals had been fine, and fine listeners to when a girl had slipped off from whatever she'd been meant to be doing to talk to a sympathetic ear or at least one who didn't understand but didn't judge so long as she slipped them a little something to keep them close by. Scraps from the table, extra feed from the bucket. That was why she'd taken Maple with her when she and Winona had run off together, her truest companion since the horse had come into her company after an auction when her father had declared it a pretty thing for a pretty girl (she was a pretty horse, it was the sentiment that had rankled at the time) as if that would fix things up. As if it'd be the trick to getting her to ride side-saddle and marry some well-to-do young man with deep pockets that she'd heard whispers of.  
  
Not that it was the sole reason for her flight with Winona but it had been up there. She'd had the bags already packed and half-demanded, half-begged to go with when her tenure on the ranch had been coming to an end.  
  
"Oh Maple," she whispered because there were so many things it was easiest to say with her face pressed to her horse's neck, "what am I doing? Besides acting a fool."  
  
"Edith?"  
  
Winona's voice called out to her, quiet enough not to startle but Edith still had to jump out the way of Whisky who swung his big stupid head round at the sound of his rider, whinnying until Edith shushed him, a hand on the bridle to stop him knocking her off her feet.   
  
"Look I'm real sorry if I offended, that wasn't what—"  
  
"No it's not—like I said, it was foolish of me—"  
  
 _At least we're both laughing_ , Edith thought as they managed to interrupt one another, a final scratch to both horses from her as she stepped away from them – Whisky needed a final shove to get him to not try nipping at her braid or what was left of it, she'd not taken it out to sleep but it had come most of the way loose since she'd tied it off this morning before heading out – with a wipe of her hands on her jeans. She'd been stinking of horse for months now, a few more stains and smells wouldn't matter.  
  
"Sometimes I forget that all this," Winona threw an arm out to the side, to the mountains behind them, the tall crop of trees sheltering them from the worst of the wind that might come howling down, the wide open country that beckoned when they mounted up in the morning, "for how easy you took to it. And I shouldn't. It ain't right of me to do that to you then go clucking my tongue. And maybe I'm too used to some things now too."  
  
"I want to do my part. Equal share. I know I came with you, you didn't need to let me come along—"  
  
"I'm going to stop you right there," Winona interrupted and it was then that Edith noticed she'd brought a blanket from the tent with her, one of thin ones rolled up by the saddles usually that she threw out over the ground, taking a seat. It was only fair that Edith did likewise so no one was craning their neck. "I didn't _let_ you do anything. If I hadn't wanted to have you along, I'd have trussed you up same as a wild turkey and dropped you off somewhere."  
  
"You wouldn't…no. No you would've. We've done that." Not that too many folk were keen on hiring any lady bounty hunters but the posters were there right enough for all to see, all the conditions for capture laid out. If a couple of ladies happened to pick them up and drag them back to the local law then wasn't that just salt in the wounds? "So, it's because I pull my weight then?"  
  
"That's part of it," Winona agreed, not easily though but not begrudgingly. She beckoned Edith closer and it was a cold night, they had no fire outside here in the dark, not out in the open where the light would be seen for miles so the cold stole into her clothes and she happily accepted Winona's heat as the other woman rolled a cigarette with ease. "You were eager enough to go, I saw that all that time working on your daddy's ranch, watching that misery eat a hole in you. What a wicked waste I thought to myself, fine young lady like that if you'll forgive me for it being chewed up by the world but it wasn't my place to make a suggestion if you weren't one willing or ready for it. Then you started making conversation more and more, not just some girl wanting to poke at the strange hard woman doing man's work because it's all she can find and think herself grateful someone's taking her on."  
  
The hard edge had crept into Winona's voice, snatches of a story she told sometimes about the fire or on the trail. Whatever her life had been before wasn't something Edith was privy to yet but what had brought her here she'd been picking up here and there and even if softening it wasn't a thing she wanted to do because Lord help her Winona as she was, rough and ready, was all that she thought of when she had any passing moment (and even when she didn't) it was something close. Something she'd read about in the romance novels that hadn't ever interested her much but that she'd still lifted from her mother. Easing the burden or soothing some ache that sounded a hundred times more appealing with Winona than any man she'd ever tried to picture herself with prior.   
  
"I mean, I wanted to talk to you, you were about the most interesting person I'd ever met. Not someone to gawk at like some sideshow."  
  
"That's how it makes you feel though don't it? When we go into any little town now, try getting on with what we're doing, even bump into people." Winona struck a match against her boot, lit the cigarette she'd rolled and took a deep inhale, a plume of smoke lost in the dark that she offered out to Edith, fingers brushing as she passed it over.  
  
Edith considered her answer, weighed up honesty in the dark as she drew the smoke deep in her lungs. "I felt like that some prize pony never quite winning the right ribbons if you understand me. My parents just…they looked at me funny all the time, like there was something they knew about me and were trying their hardest to—to just not see or to look past. Like if none of us could so it, it'd be gone." She passed the cigarette back without looking, her head tipped back to stare at the night sky above them, a blanket of stars she thought she'd never tire of. "If I looked at them though I knew they weren't happy. They were ashamed."  
  
To her shame now there were tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, maybe she could blame it on the smoke, on the cold, on exhaustion. Maybe it was dark enough that Winona wouldn't see her but an arm wrapped tighter about her, urging her head down so it was tucked under Winona's chin nestled against warm skin and didn't that just make it better and worse all at once?  
  
"Now I can't believe that, good girl like you from respectable folks like yours are? Not a hint of scandal about them and you know the people I know, I hear that kind of talk."  
  
"It wasn't," Edith leant back to steal the cigarette, taking a shaky drag of it before continuing, "it wasn't anything I did. Maybe more things I didn't do."  
  
"Doesn't exactly narrow that one down, c'mon, things we've been through? Places we've been already together, being shot at, bar fights, wild animals going for us, horses threatening to mutiny? Little talk like this got you shaking like a leaf?" Winona's smile was in her voice, the sort of easy sincerity she tended to radiate that any other time would've been appreciated but now it was a dangerous thing when they were close like this, sharing heat in the cold and the dark, only horses to witness them, the curl of tobacco in the air as they traded the cigarette back and forth. Eventually, when Edith continued to say nothing, her chin was caught carefully in Winona's hand, tipped up so she had little choice but to meet her eye. "Sweetheart," and she said it sweet and gentle the way she might with Maple or when they were larking around breaking up the camp in the mornings that it made her ache, "I like to think we can trust each other. Months out here the way we live is years everywhere else or that's what it's taught me. And I trust you, I do, with my whole life."  
  
Edith swallowed, made to answer and instead took hold of Winona's hand still clutching the cigarette. Somewhere in the midst they both fumbled, misread the signs, and instead of taking it from her she ended up pulling the hand, cigarette and all to her mouth to take a drag on it and stared, eyes wide, almost choking when she realised what she'd done. Quick as she could she made to scramble away but Winona had a hold of her and Winona had had years of this life and whatever had come before it compared to Edith, stronger, faster than a rattlesnake when she grabbed to hold her still. Edith's heart thumped faster than a jackrabbit, wishing she could look away but there was only Winona, Winona watching her with the same scrutiny reserved for planning a hunting trip or cleaning her guns.  
  
"Oh sweetheart," she murmured and this would be it, the end of it, until her mouth was tilted upward into a kiss that was awkward because it was damned dark and she jumped, not expecting any of it after all, noses getting in the way. "I didn't want to say anything, I've had girls look at me before, like I said—"  
  
"I'm not one of those girls Winona," Edith replied, finding her footing at last so it seemed with a hand on her thigh – when had she gotten so bold, certainly not in her imaginings – to keep her balance. "Wasn't the whole reason I ran off but the company sure was easy on the eye."  
  
"Miss Edith." There it was, the little smile that crept into the corner of Winona's mouth as she said it and Edith was still blushing, there was no other reason her cheeks would be so hot after all. "What are we to do with one another?"  
  
"I think we should finish this cigarette, it'd be a sin to waste it. After that? Well I believe I see a tent right there and you could catch me up on how you think I've been looking at you."  
  
"Only if you'll do likewise."  
  
"Oh that's a promise, I've had plenty of time to think on the matter."

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2, that's probably why I ended up here during a writing exercise on a break from longer pieces. 
> 
> Title from This Side of Paradise by Hayley Kiyoko


End file.
